Archives for October 2009

I’m currently evaluating SEO and web marketing tools, and will be posting a series of reviews and experiences over the next few months. I do this sort of hands-on review about every 18 months, although I haven’t published my thoughts previously. This year’s high level of change in the web search world demands a new review now.

My methodology for review is rather straightforward. I am a competitive web publisher and I do some web strategy/SEO consulting for clients. So my needs cross over from publisher to multi-site publisher to service provider. I work with small sites and very large sites.

I take an academic or experimentalist approach to my work, paying close attention to details. I take time to try and understand what I am doing, and what results are provided, rather than accept findings as what they are supposed to be. Contrast that to an agency style of working, more concerned with uniformity, scalability, and simplicity. In other words, rather than seek automation of tasks I don’t mind interacting manually with my work tasks… provided that effort delivers value. I almost always seek unique value from my work, and consider it more like research than task work.

I will be using these tools and services to solve real problems in real time, during the evaluation period, but using test sites or competitor sites or sites associated with side projects (the local youth hockey league, my dentist, sites I have offered to consult to as a favor etc). For those I choose to continue to work with, I hope to address specific SEO/SEM problems further using the tools, as a means of figuring out if they can be used successfully that way, or how else they may prove insightful. I hope everyone reading will participate in those cases.

For most of my serious work I use tools I have developed in house, or tools accessed via client accounts. Part of this review is a consideration of the state of the art of third party tools for search marketing and competitive web strategy — including whether or not it appears wise to trust them with business activity data. I hope to identify some new opportunities.

If you know of a SEO/SEM related tool or service that should be included in this evaluation, please leave a comment to that effect. If you have a specific reason for suggesting it, please say so, since that can help prioritize and maybe streamline some of the evaluations. I will try and evaluate everything according to my priority, regardless of cost, but of course I will be limited by my ability to gain access to tools and services. Expensive services that require term commitments and services which only provide limited trial versions will probably be excluded from consideration. I think that a company that can’t arrange for full evaluation of its offering doesn’t deserve to be considered.

other tools that are commonly used by a competitive publisher/SEO during the course of a project

Those are examples of the types of tools I’ll evaluate, not necessarily ones I will be using/evaluating. I’ll post the specific tools by name when I review them.

Again, if you have specific tools or services to suggest, please comment (comments here are moderated so if you can mark your comment private if you don’t want it published here). Thanks in advance for pointing to good tools/services I might not already know.

Google has finally succumbed to the pressures of reality and ponied up the cash to buy Twitter for $6 billion dollars (mostly cash plus some serious seats at Google). Twitter is now owned by Google, as it should be.

That’s the headline I think we’ll see soon enough, when Google gets over itself and swallows the bitter pill. The mistake was already made… more than once…. when Google failed to truly demonstrate the value of Twitter to its future. Had it offered a sweet enough deal, it could have bought Twitter before. Everyone has a price. But with each passing week, Google (and the rest of us) see more and more clearly just how essential Twitter is to Google’s future. And each wek, the cost of acquiring Twitter goes up.

One of these days, Google will make the sacrifice. The question is when… and whether Google will survive the transaction.

If a professional link builder created a tool for managing the process of researching, requesting, logging and managing links (paid, volunteered, incentivized, viral, or whatever), would you use it? That’s the question, and it is a question which cuts to the core issues of SEO land (trust) while highlighting uncertainties associated with the “software as a service” model (the security of competitive business information).

We already have a whole generation of people raised on web-based software as a service. Raised in a world where data is placed into allegedly-secure online databases, and accessed via the web (with little or no access accounting). Contrast that with the “old fashioned” way of doing business — keeping your own business data on your own computers, locked inside your own offices.

I used to laugh at the way people posted their private, competitive business data to third party websites. Then I stared in befuddlement as that became the norm. Nowadays I just walk around shaking my had, muttering not-very-savantish things at garbage cans while onlookers brand me a lunatic. Just kidding… but I am amazed that so few recognize the risks associated with sharing business information.

Now a well know link building service provider is offering a tool for managing link building. Part of the pitch is that only a professional link builder really knows how to build a good link building tool. I don’t disagree… but I do think the last person I want to share my link building activity data with is a professional link builder.

Just think of how valuable your link building activity data would be to someone in the link building business! That service will aggregate a vast database of places people get links from, people (webmasters) contacted for linking purposes, and perhaps even the costs of links negotiated. Wow… what a great resource for a professional link builder to data mine.

I didn’t mention the person nor company, and don’t mean to imply any lack of trust nor do I suggest that you be concerned about trusting that person. No, I suggest you be concerned about trusting anyone with your business information, especially link building activity data.

Today Google announced that it is crowdsourcing 3D maps, calling it “Google Building“. Google Building pretends to be a cool new Lego-like game for tech geeks to waste their time with, but in reality, it’s crowdsourcing that I expect will work well for Google.

Check out the video:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI6wVtCY99E]

Google smartly makes use of the perspective views obtained from aerial photography, and provides the (simple) tool for overlaying simple geometric shapes it can easily register to the images. It then (again, easily) maps the images to the built blocks. If you’ve ever worked in image processing, you recognize this as very smart engineering — taking the available data, simplifying the remaining tasks to those that are easily accomplished but which deliver greatest impact.

After all, Google doesn’t need the rendering to be exact. It needs it to look good and be a close relative approximation. And since it is easy and fun, it can be crowdsourced.

Bravo, Google. I can’t wait to see various cities race to be the first fully-rendered (San Francisco?).Oh, and of course the cross-promotion/adoption of Google Earth, Google Maps, Google SketchUp, etc.

Another variant of Health Vault, and another bad domain name. This time it’s keas.com, an online medical records play from Adam Bosworth, who left his position as head of the Google Health team. Of Bosworth’s choice of domain name, The New York Times says: “The name “kea” refers to a species of alpine parrot, which he spotted on the South Island of New Zealand”

The name of an alpine parrot? From New Zealand? A homonym of “keys”? Confusingly similar to the car company Kia? Or does it mean “Killed In Action”?

I can imagine the excuses made at pitch meetings.. it’s short, and we need a short name so people can remember it. Or It was “available”. Or perhaps even “we’re a startup.. we’ll re-brand later” which is always my favorite. Rebrand later? Are you serious? And then there’s the “our exit startegy is to be bought by some big company or conglomerate, and they won’t care about the name“. Or maybe “we’re not really independent, but just set up that way so that we could do things that big established companies would not be allowed to do. Like a skunkfarm. So the name didn’t matter“.

Not to be overly critical of just the domainname, this play seems to be all about locking up a community and keeping them away from searching for themselves. Rather than rely on healthcare search marketing, the business of reaching consumers who need need specific health information by appearing prominantly before them when they search Google or Bing, this play is about locking the consumer into a medical records database system. Once your data is in there, they own you. It will know everything about you. It will know you are 47, overweight, diabetic, and that you play fantasy football 7 hours a day on the weekends. From there, it can pretty much predict the rest (including your liklihood of drawing on health insurance coverage in the near term, mid term, long term).

It’s backed by both Google and Microsoft, so far (according to the report)… those same players who were so widely criticized when they tried to lock up medical records last time. Criticized because, well, their initiatives are completely driven by profit and corporate power, while our governments remain almost completely inert on the front of “helping people because they need help and it’s the right thing to do (and also cause we took their tax money)“.

Keas. Not a herd of small Korean cars… not those little metal things you use to start your big American car. It’s your interface to your medical records, sponsored by the companies that want to know everything about you. In order to help you. Sure.

Update 10/2009: Note that this is a blog… an opinion. I post on topics of interest, but don’t pretend to be a news reporter. That said, this post was on-target. It was a response to the crazy blogging going on after the FTC announced new guidelines for sponsored word of mouth advertising. Righteous-sounding bloggers proclaimed fines and laws barring word of mouth promotions that did not openly “disclose” material relationships (like free products). I said that was nonsense (see below). Subsequent updates (see the end, down below) confirmed that.

But for those who like to go further with the facts, check out this report of the IAB’s response to the FTC action. The report states:

Richard Cleland, assistant director, division of advertising practices at the FTC, said the ‘$11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law. … There’s no monetary penalty, in terms of the first violation, even in the worst case.’ Instead, he said the FTC’s guidelines are intended to serve as education.

See? It’s not really even a fine… it’s a guideline. For education. Carry on.—end of update

A report of the final draft of the new FTC guidelines is out. You can read it here, or read about it here. I don’t like the Mashable coverage; I don’t think it is objective enough, and it clearly sensationalizes the fines aspect, with additional commentary suggesting a strong bias against paid endorsements.

Looking at the actual FTC news release instead, I’ll highlight what I consider the most important parts of the report (which is NOT the guideline…that is to be posted to the Federal Register):

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves

Got that? The FTC won’t be taking you off to jail, and your lawyer is free to argue your case on the points. It’s not a fine for non-disclosure.

advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.

Know those promotions that have fine print “results not typical”? Now they have to actual say what typical is. That’s the change.

the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement

Okay so now that’s settled. It was always true, but the FTC wanted to state publicly that its lawyers were convinced it was true (as a means of influencing the court system) Now your lawyer should be certain that it is true, too. This can save you money.

bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service

This is the guideline (not the law). This can be argued… on several points. Was the post an actual advertisement? Was it an actual endorsement? Did the material benefits come directly from the seller, or through a third party? Expect evangelical paid-posts-are-evil websites to proclaim the end of sponsored posts, and the make-money-online web sites to come up with crafty new ways to make a personal blog post NOT technically an endorsement (somehow). That’s how business works, and that’s how evangelical social media websites get attention.

if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization

This is a good change, but the political action groups have addressed this (successfully) already. They make new non-profit organizations and think tanks that sound like one thing, but are actually another. A certain “coal is the future of America’s independence from foreign oil” group, which proclaims that CO2 is good for us, and is named green something, comes to mind. There are more of these; they play to our collective lack of patience for looking past the labels and tag lines. (To the Social Media blogger who took money to publish this… I have to say cool story bro).

Finally, the guidelines really boldly clarify this one:

a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims

I guess that needed to be clarified, since we’ve just about forgotten about the concept of right and wrong in this country lately.

Updated 10/15/2009: Jon Henshaw provided an update/clarification that pretty much confirms what I said above.. check it out.